Pausing for .... beauty
The very best skill, a violin, a crowd and the truth thrown in your face.
That's what this experiment was about. Joshua Bell, supposedly one of the top 3 greatest violinists alive, stood in a tunnel in the early morning just when the working crowd was passing. One of the greatest violinists, playing his 300 year old instrument, playing 6 of the best pieces of music ever written in the history of man. In a tunnel in Washington D.C. leading to the busiest federal government office belt.
1097 people passed by him in the span of 46 minutes... passed by..
___________________
We are so busy. So so so busy.
Does it feel familiar to you? Our hearts beating faster when we are nearing the office door. Feeling you can't pull through the day without the next cup of coffee. That irritation that comes with that extra phone call at 5:43pm, that faster footstep when we sense we are going to be approached and stopped by a roadside financial planner... that....
This isn't just another one of those 'take-a-break-get-some-self-care' posts. It's more than that.
Breaks are merely times when we stop our brains from moving. I think, real self-care that has deep and lasting rest for the soul goes deeper than that. I think it stems from a consciousness that chooses to take every chance to appreciate true beauty. Real self-care goes beyond avoiding the negatives of life, it comes with an ability to see beauty even when there is a gross negativity, to see beauty where there seemingly is none.
And we have lost that.
We have lost the ability to even define beauty, much less appreciate beauty itself.
How many times has the man or woman we love turned into an ugly monster because we saw him or her standing between us and our attention to our stress? When was the last time you held a baby's hand and took in the sheer beauty of her innocence and purity? (I hope it wasn't when your last baby was born..) When did I last buy the cheapest breed of durian instead of the Mao Shan Wang and open my eyes wide in pure joy as I smelt and tasted its sheer richness and creaminess even though it paled it comparison with the King of the Cat Mountain? When did we last have a conversation so deep and engaging that it left us breathless and gasping for air? When did we last give a hug and stay present in his arms and him in mine, and not rush to let go to do the next thing on our schedule? When did we last.. stop to listen to the best violinist alive play for free?
______________________
And so I've been re-discovering iTunes ever since I managed to make it work on my computer again. And iTunes has changed so much since I last used it on my old computer back in 2006-7.
It isn't the just how the programme works anymore, or how it manages to gather all my media and play it in one place, or how its search engine is incredibly intuitive to rummage through all my music. iTunes now is all about its iTunes store, with so much media on it, I sometimes get giddy trying to navigate through it.
It seems that everyone on the earth with any significant idea to broadcast to the rest of us has a spot on iTunes. And most of the time, these ideas are sold to you for free. You don't pay anything for it except your time. Which of course would also entail giving up dinner with a friend, or with a wife, or with a child (in my case, my little dear niece). And so to remedy that, they invent the iPod so that you can listen on the go when you're travelling, without the need to disturb the rest of your day.
I am just left open-jawed at the amount of material there is on iTunes. Every conceivable topic, every conceivable subject, every conceivable perspective, every conceivable idea. Impossible is nothing.
With every single podcast packaged as nicely as the next one, I just don't know which ones to listen to. As of now, I've downloaded enough podcasts to listen to for more than 24 hours without stopping a single minute. Trust me, that's not a lot, but I already don't know where to start.
And I wonder if the neverending avalanche of stuff pouring our way, each one claiming superiority to the one behind it, each one claiming to be more insightful, more incisive, more critical, more fantastical, more sensational than every other one, is the reason we've stopped even bothering about what is truly good. We've been subconsciously disappointed too many times with mediocrity, duped by clever advertising into buying stuff not nearly as good as what it claims to be, bombarded by the drone of anticipated unexpected 'normalness' which ironically is what most of us crave for.
Maybe we need to find our definitions of beauty again, and stop to listen.
The next time you pass by Orchard MRT tunnel, Corrinne May might just be singing her song, but don't forget to rush for your new Uniqlo tee at ION Orchard.
That's what this experiment was about. Joshua Bell, supposedly one of the top 3 greatest violinists alive, stood in a tunnel in the early morning just when the working crowd was passing. One of the greatest violinists, playing his 300 year old instrument, playing 6 of the best pieces of music ever written in the history of man. In a tunnel in Washington D.C. leading to the busiest federal government office belt.
1097 people passed by him in the span of 46 minutes... passed by..
___________________
We are so busy. So so so busy.
Does it feel familiar to you? Our hearts beating faster when we are nearing the office door. Feeling you can't pull through the day without the next cup of coffee. That irritation that comes with that extra phone call at 5:43pm, that faster footstep when we sense we are going to be approached and stopped by a roadside financial planner... that....
This isn't just another one of those 'take-a-break-get-some-self-care' posts. It's more than that.
Breaks are merely times when we stop our brains from moving. I think, real self-care that has deep and lasting rest for the soul goes deeper than that. I think it stems from a consciousness that chooses to take every chance to appreciate true beauty. Real self-care goes beyond avoiding the negatives of life, it comes with an ability to see beauty even when there is a gross negativity, to see beauty where there seemingly is none.
And we have lost that.
We have lost the ability to even define beauty, much less appreciate beauty itself.
How many times has the man or woman we love turned into an ugly monster because we saw him or her standing between us and our attention to our stress? When was the last time you held a baby's hand and took in the sheer beauty of her innocence and purity? (I hope it wasn't when your last baby was born..) When did I last buy the cheapest breed of durian instead of the Mao Shan Wang and open my eyes wide in pure joy as I smelt and tasted its sheer richness and creaminess even though it paled it comparison with the King of the Cat Mountain? When did we last have a conversation so deep and engaging that it left us breathless and gasping for air? When did we last give a hug and stay present in his arms and him in mine, and not rush to let go to do the next thing on our schedule? When did we last.. stop to listen to the best violinist alive play for free?
______________________
And so I've been re-discovering iTunes ever since I managed to make it work on my computer again. And iTunes has changed so much since I last used it on my old computer back in 2006-7.
It isn't the just how the programme works anymore, or how it manages to gather all my media and play it in one place, or how its search engine is incredibly intuitive to rummage through all my music. iTunes now is all about its iTunes store, with so much media on it, I sometimes get giddy trying to navigate through it.
It seems that everyone on the earth with any significant idea to broadcast to the rest of us has a spot on iTunes. And most of the time, these ideas are sold to you for free. You don't pay anything for it except your time. Which of course would also entail giving up dinner with a friend, or with a wife, or with a child (in my case, my little dear niece). And so to remedy that, they invent the iPod so that you can listen on the go when you're travelling, without the need to disturb the rest of your day.
I am just left open-jawed at the amount of material there is on iTunes. Every conceivable topic, every conceivable subject, every conceivable perspective, every conceivable idea. Impossible is nothing.
With every single podcast packaged as nicely as the next one, I just don't know which ones to listen to. As of now, I've downloaded enough podcasts to listen to for more than 24 hours without stopping a single minute. Trust me, that's not a lot, but I already don't know where to start.
And I wonder if the neverending avalanche of stuff pouring our way, each one claiming superiority to the one behind it, each one claiming to be more insightful, more incisive, more critical, more fantastical, more sensational than every other one, is the reason we've stopped even bothering about what is truly good. We've been subconsciously disappointed too many times with mediocrity, duped by clever advertising into buying stuff not nearly as good as what it claims to be, bombarded by the drone of anticipated unexpected 'normalness' which ironically is what most of us crave for.
Maybe we need to find our definitions of beauty again, and stop to listen.
The next time you pass by Orchard MRT tunnel, Corrinne May might just be singing her song, but don't forget to rush for your new Uniqlo tee at ION Orchard.
I woke up today feeling quite happy. Somehow, though I was physically tired, the questions U asked made me see how I really define happiness. Brought rest to my soul in a way. How apt, your post.